How Far Cry 5 Revamps the Structure of Sandbox Storytelling

Ubisoft’s latest open world shooter gives you narrative freedom without the usual dissonance or disconnects.

By
Tristan Ogilvie

I’ve previously played enough of Far Cry 5 to already be on board with its stunning Montana setting, disturbing doomsday cult premise, freeform firefights and astonishingly addictive fly-fishing, but I came away from my latest hands-on with the game with a new appreciation of the efforts the narrative team at Ubisoft Montreal has made in terms of delivering a cohesive story that’s consistently compelling for the player, which is no mean feat within its massive sandbox littered with head-turning distractions.

... Alone in a lawless landscape with all the roads leading out blocked, the phone lines cut, and no one coming to save you.

It all starts with an opening that honestly can’t be recommended for anyone with high blood pressure. As a junior police officer you begin the game flanked by the Hope County sheriff and a US Marshal in the back of a helicopter bound for the Church of Eden’s Gate, seeking to apprehend cult leader and main antagonist, Father Joseph Seed. Seed goes willingly, allowing you to slap the cuffs on him while calmly assuring his wild-eyed followers that God will not let you take him, but just as your chopper is taking off the mob turns violent, swarming the outside of the vessel like zombies as it struggles to get off the ground. A particularly devout disciple launches himself into the rotor blades and explodes into a red smear all over the windshield, sending the whirlybird crashing to earth and leaving you alone in a lawless landscape with all the roads leading out blocked, the phone lines cut, and no one coming to save you. It’s an incredibly tense introduction, and less than half an hour into the game I already felt hooked harder than the slowest sturgeon in the stream. (Did I mention how much I like the fishing?)

“The beginning of the game is quite straightforward but once you finish that, you can go in any direction and tackle any of the three regions; John, Jacob, or Faith,” explains narrative director Jean-Sebastian Decant, referring to the territories of the three family members that must be overthrown before the player can take down Father Joseph Seed. Each region has a different look and feel which in turn has a significant impact on the gameplay experience. From my time with the game, I’ve found the farming area of John’s region to be open and flat and lending itself to larger scale firefights and sniping, while Jacob’s region is mountainous and denser with foliage so there’s less visibility and a lot more wildlife.

The player can choose to just stay within one region and systematically see it through to the end, or sidestep in and out of regions strengthening the local resistance and completing story missions at their leisure. Either way the development team has taken measures to ensure that despite the freedom of choice the overall narrative never feels disjointed or suffers any kind of chronological disorder.

“We never want to keep reins on the player, we want to let them loose, let them enjoy the game the way they want to but then find ways to adapt the game to what the player is doing,” continues Decant.

“So characters will adjust what they say to you in cutscenes and also in the world, based on the actions you’ve done so far, to ensure that there’s continuity [no matter which order you tackle the story in]. We also adjust the story depending on what you choose to do first, and then there are a few [more substantial] branching paths here and there [based on player decisions].”

Video Killed the Radio Tower

The whole experience feels more immersive and less like a methodical mopping up of icons on your minimap.

This clever papering over of the seams in the game’s narrative works in tandem with the more organic way missions and activities are discovered in Far Cry 5 to make the whole experience feel more immersive and less like a methodical mopping up of icons on your minimap. In fact early in the game one of the first allies you make, Dutch, has a not so subtle dig at the more rigid structure of previous Far Crys by telling you, “I know what you’re thinking and no, I ain’t going to have you climbing towers all over the county.”

“[Far Cry 5] is a completely organic game,” says creative director, Dan Hay. “In Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 4 there were towers, but those days are over. When we were in Montana [researching the game], we realised that we wanted the game to feel credible and real, and the way we accrue information in the real world is we talk to people. And those people are not just AI desperately waiting to give you a mission, they actually have a life.”

Thus speaking with locals can lead you to secret weapons stashes, observing hunting signs in the world can net you the best spots to track deer, and listening to an answering machine message in an abandoned residence may lead you to the whereabouts of a potential gun for hire. This level of more immersive, organic world design also extends to the abundant environmental evidence of the Church of Eden’s Gate deeds, like when you enter a cabin in the woods and find ominous taunts scrawled on the walls above mutilated corpses strung up in poses straight out of a serial killer’s sketchbook, as well as the pervasive presence of its megalomaniacal main villain.

“Father Joseph Seed makes appearances in the different storylines, so he’s not like the bad guy that you meet at the beginning and then don’t see until the very end, he’s always present in the world,” continues Decant.

“And so we have a lot of tricks and things in the world to ensure that you’re still aware of your end goal, which is to take him down. For example, you might be stealthily sneaking into an outpost, and we play on the PA speaker the speeches of the father so his philosophy is broadcast in the world. So while you’re actually taking marks and preparing your attack, you are still absorbing his words. So we have lots of little things like that to ensure that the main narrative is always around you, even if you might not be on a main story mission at the time.”

The Strong Silent Type

In a first for the series, Far Cry 5 also features a player creator tool. Yet allowing the player to customise their main character isn’t purely just so that you and your co-op partner don’t end up wearing the same flannel and truckstop hat to a farmyard firefight (which is admittedly always awkward), but also another effort from Ubisoft Montreal to enhance the storytelling.

“We have this game where we give a lot of freedom, you can engage in many things, and so we wanted to find a way to ensure that your character is really about you,” says Decant.

“We don’t impose a voice like in other games where you do something in the game and suddenly the character might comment about it, but what he says is not what you necessarily feel. We wanted to get rid of that dissonance. And that’s why we embraced the idea of the silent protagonist that has very minimal back story, basically he’s a rookie deputy, it’s his first day on the job, he’s on a risky mission and it’s going to turn very bad. That’s it. And you press start, and this becomes your story.”

It’s already clear that Far Cry 5 will serve up an overwhelming amount of totally anarchic, moment to moment fun. In the time I spent exploring Jacob’s region of the map, I managed to lure skunks into enemy compounds and watch the enemies hilariously freak out about the fetid skunk spray, tear up a Clutch Nixon stunt circuit on a quad bike, befriend a grizzly bear named Cheeseburger and employ him as a cultist-mauling attack dog, and become firmly attached to the compound bow and the supremely satisfying thwick of its headshots. But as enjoyable as these diversions and emergent gameplay moments are, it’s the care that’s gone into crafting the overall narrative that suggests that Far Cry 5 might be the most well rounded entry in the series to date, with a story that appears to be every bit as inescapable as the cult it revolves around.

Tristan Ogilvie is the Video Producer at IGN AU. On the rare occasion he does tweet, his tweets can be found @tristanogilvie